Unsolved problems in : Note: Use the unsolved tag: {{unsolved|F|X}}, where "F" is any field in the sciences: and "X" is a concise "explanation" with or without links. The appropriate category tag will automatically be added.

This article discusses currently unsolved problems in linguistics. General science-related image. ... Unsolved problems in : Add an unsolved problems template to articles that deal with specific unsolved questions. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. ... Theoretical linguistics studies diverse questions: how certain languages managed to communicate, what properties all languages have in common, what knowledge a person must have to be able to use a language, and language acquisition. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... The vowels of modern (Standard) Arabic and (Israeli) Hebrew from the phonological point of view. ... Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ... {{ Categories: | | ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek and in greek letters σημαντικός or in latin letters semantikós, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... Lexical semantics is a field in computer science and linguistics which deals mainly with word meaning. ... Prototype Theory is a model of graded categorization in Cognitive Science, where all members of a category do not have equal status. ... Stylistics is the study of style used in literary, and verbal language and the effect the writer/speaker wishes to communicate to the reader/hearer. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for the use of a language. ... Pragmatics is generally the study of natural language understanding, and specifically the study of how context influences the interpretation of meanings. ... Applied linguistics is concerned with using linguistic theory to address real-world problems. ... Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. ... Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. ... Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. ... In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the currently dominant school of linguistics that views the important essence of language as innately based in evolutionarily-developed and speciated faculties, and seeks explanations that advance or fit well into the current understandings of the human mind. ... Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and logical modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. ... Descriptive linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing how language is actually spoken now (or how it was actually spoken in the past), by any group of people. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ... Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... Efforts to describe and explain the human language faculty have been undertaken throughout recorded history. ... A linguist in the academic sense is a person who studies linguistics. ... This is a list of lists of unsolved problems in various subjects: Unsolved problems in biology Unsolved problems in chemistry Unsolved problems in cognitive science Unsolved problems in computer science Unsolved problems in economics Unsolved problems in Egyptology Unsolved problems in governance Unsolved problems in mathematics Unsolved problems in medicine... Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. ...

• Origin of language is the major unsolved problem, despite centuries of interest in the topic.
• Unclassified languages, or languages whose genetic affiliation has not been established, mostly due to lack of reliable data.
  • Languages isolate
• Gradient well-formedness^[1], referring to intermediate linguistic phenomena falling between complete well-formedness and complete ill-formedness.
• Psycholinguistics:
  • Emergence of grammar^[2], see also "Origin of language"
    • For example, is the human ability to use syntax based on innate mental structures or is syntactic speech the function of intelligence and interaction with other humans?
    • Can we design psycholinguistic experiments to answer the question above?
  • Language acquisition:
    • How are infants able to learn language?
    • Animal language acquisition:
      • Can some animals be taught the syntax of human language?
  • How localized is language in the brain?
• Translation:
  • An objective gauge for the quality of translation.^[3]
  • Machine translation, despite successes, is a source of a large number of unsolved problems
    • Pronoun resolution, Anaphora (linguistics) ^[4]
    • Nominal compound analysis ^[5]

The origin of language (glottogony, glossogeny) is a topic that has been written about for centuries, but the ephemeral nature of speech means that there is almost no data on which to base conclusions on the subject. ... Unclassified languages are languages whose genetic affiliation has not been established, mostly due to lack of reliable data. ... A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or genetic) relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language. ... Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. ... Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... The origin of language (glottogony, glossogeny) is a topic that has been written about for centuries, but the ephemeral nature of speech means that there is almost no data on which to base conclusions on the subject. ... Language acquisition is the process by which language develops in humans. ... In linguistics, animal language acquisition (ALA) refers to controversial claims and experiments which assert, or are otherwised based in a view that non-human animals hold abilities for generating and communicating the symbols of abstract language, though they have not manifest such abilities in nature. ... {{ Categories: | | ... Look up translate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the acronym MT, is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech in between natural languages. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun phrase. ... In linguistics, anaphora is an instance of an expression referring to another. ... A compound is a word composed of more than one free morphemes. ...

References

1. ^ Gradient Well-Formedness in Optimality Theory (rtf file):

   "Virtually every generative linguist has had the following experience: a given linguistic entity (sentence, novel word, pronunciation) is presented to a native speaker and judged to be neither fully well-formed nor fully unacceptable. In such instances, consultants often say things like "I guess I could say that," "It's all right but not perfect," "It's pretty bad but not completely out," and the like"

2. ^ "Simulated Evolution of Language: a Review of the Field", Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 5, no. 2
3. ^ Robert Spence, "A Functional Approach to Translation Studies. New systemic linguistic challenges in empirically informed didactics", 2004, ISBN 3898257770, thesis. A pdf file
4. ^ Jeffrey C. Reynar, "Topic Segmentation: Algorithms and Applications" (1998), Ph.D thesis, citation.
5. ^ Pierre Isabelle, "Another Look at Nominal Compounds", In Proc. of the 10th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (pdf)